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THE SCHOLAR. 


-A.3ST ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE 


fj|ilflnt8ijjtsian Huthtg, 


KENYON COLLEGE, 

AUGUST 1, 1 855. 



BY MANNING F . FORCE, ESQ., 

OF CINCINNATI. 


PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 


S' COLUMBUS: 

PRINTED BY THE OHIO STATE JOURNAL COMPANY. 


1855. 






THE S-CHOLAK 


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ADDRESS' 


DELIVERED BEFORE 

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KENYON COLLEGE, 


AUGUST 1, 1855. 


BY MANNING F.'fOBCE, ESQ., 

OF CINCINNATI. 


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PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 


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ADDRESS 


Gentlemen of the Philomathesian Society, 

and Ladies and Gentlemen : 

We have all come to this nursery of learning, to do honor 
to the graduates of to day. For four years, they have been 
neither ploughing nor reaping, busy neither with the factory nor 
the shop ; but simply acquiring knowledge. From this day they 
begin to delve, and plod — and make money. If they continue 
to increase their learning, it will be not for the sake of learning, 
but for some ulterior purpose. Hitherto they have been scholars ; 
henceforth they are to be practical men. 

By “ a scholar,” is not meant now, as formerly was meant, 
simply the student of languages. The man of science, as well 
as the man of letters, is now called a scholar. He is one who 
cultivates learning, of whatever sort, provided he cultivates it for 
its own sake, without reference to its practical application. The 
chemist and the geologist are scholars as truly as Porson. The 
student of Psychology is equally entitled to the name ; for who 
would deny the title to Locke, or Kant ? The true poet, who 
studies and analyzes the finer relations of things as closely as the 
metaphysician, is so far a scholar. Shakspeare exemplifies 
and illustrates the laws of mind, which others eliminate and 
announce. The true scholar, then, is one who gets learning, as 


4 


The Scholar. 


distinguished from one who turns it to practical uses. His aim 
is not in any way to add to our material wealth, but simply to 
amplify our knowledge. 

Such as he is, all ages have delighted to do him honor. In 
the primeval civilization of Egypt the scholar was priest ; he was 
hierarch, standing above the civil government. Temples whose 
sombre grandeur awed the world, were built for his home ; the 
wealth of the people was poured at his feet, and the nation bowed 
in homage before him. Afterwards, in Greece, the people fol- 
lowed him about to catch wisdom as it dropped from his lips ; 
cities vied with each other in having him for their guest ; princes 
courted his presence and sued for his counsel. Still later, in the 
Middle Ages, he was the most familiar of Charlemagne’s friends ; 
he filled the highest places in the church when the church ruled 
the world ; thousands flocked from the ends of the earth to listen 
to his teachings at the university; while the unlettered people 
eyed him askance with dread, but with reverence, as one who 
had supernatural gifts. Still later, in the last century, when 
social elegance reached in France its culminating point, the 
scholar was flattered by the court, courted by the nobility, and 
applauded by the populace. All this while, learning was a patent 
of honor ; scholarship was a self-sufficient dignity. No one asked 
what good the scholar did. To say of a man “ he is a scholar, ” 
was enough. 

But coming down to our day, and crossing over to our land, 
we find all this changed. A people planted on a virgin continent 
has been busy fitting up a home. It has been as much as it 
could do, to hew down forests, level hills, fill up valleys, clear 
away the wilderness, and build up a nation. It has been battling 


An Address. 


5 


with physical obstacles ; it has been growing in strength and ma- 
terial wealth. In all this, not the scholar, but the practical man, 
takes the lead. His brawny and stalwart frame delights to grap- 
ple with such difficulties. His practical sense, his energy, his 
stubborn perseverance, his never failing confidence, his perfect 
self-reliance, subdue them. He is a Titan of physical advance- 
ment. Turnpikes, canals, railroads, flash along his foot prints ; 
marshes dry up, dank forests disappear, towns and cities 
spring forth, fleets deck the waters, and the wealth of the world 
comes thundering along at his command. He is at home in such 
work ; his proper sphere is building up a new nation. 

Meanwhile, he has no patience with metaphysics, abstractions, 
theories. He knows only the concrete. He deals with hard, 
physical facts. He likes to see labor followed by a palpable 
result. His great test is, utility. He puts aside the aesthetic, 
as child’s play, or else a piece of transcendental nonsense. Every 
thing must pass the ordeal of his question “ what is the use ? ” 
He wants a practical government, and a strong one ; a govern- 
ment that does not trouble itself about the rights of man, about 
contests for principle, or spend its time in philanthropic move- 
ments ; but a government that keeps down mobs ; one that enacts 
laws to protect his factory, to help his road, to secure the usury 
upon his loans. He wants a practical school ; not one that teaches 
Latin, geometry, metaphysics ; but one that teaches good sound 
reading, writing, arithmetic and book-keeping. He wants a 
practical literature ; for instance, newspapers, and perhaps novels 
that teach political economy. He has a certain toleration for 
artists ; for they indeed manufacture pictures which make up part 
of his furniture. He regards them as an extravagant sort of 


G 


The Scholar. 


upholsterers. But musicians, poets, scholars, and folk of that 
sort, he has no respect for. He glowers at the poor scholar and 
asks, what is his use ? When he hears that one spends a month 
in working out the mathematical formula which shall express the 
spinning of a top, and another reads every page in Cicero’s works 
to find how the imperfect tense is used after cum , while a third 
spends two years in watching eggs which produce an animalcule 
too small to he seen without a microscope, he repeats with angry 
emphasis, “ what is the use of these fellows ?” 

And he must be answered. He is ruler now ; he represents 
the spirit of the age, and can require an answer. Stand forth 
then, scholars, and tell what use you may be. I will catch the 
answer and report it : 

First, the Scholar is useful in the most tangible and palpable 
way. His studies affect the prices in the market, and the comfort 
of our homes. However visionary his particular study may 
seem, yet in the long run we are sure to find some practical ben- 
efit flowing from it. . He is investigating either the laws and rela- 
tions of mind, or the laws and relations of matter. And while 
we are so wholly dependent upon the laws of matter and mind, 
no new light can be thrown upon them without directly affecting 
us. When the astronomer was studying the stars, to fix their 
place in the heavens, he was not, it is true, thinking of the perils 
of commerce on the ocean, but was simply searching for new 
truth. Nevertheless, he did furnish rules, which the navigator 
could use, and does use, to determine his place at sea. Other 
scholars all over the world were watching the vagaries of the 
magnetic needle ; they were thinking only of the nature and laws 
of the mysterious influence called terrestrial magnetism. But 


An Address. 


7 


navigators make use of their labor, and navigation is made more 
secure, and hence cheaper. Commerce all over the world has 
been affected by the studies of these men. Not a bale of cotton 
or a package of goods crosses the ocean, but is cheaper by reason 
of the star-gazing of the scholar. 

The student of pure mathematics is concerned only with the 
abstract relations of numbers. He revels in his curves and 
crooked lines, and cabalistic symbols. Yet he has so simplified 
and systematized the relations of numbers and quantities, that 
every man who wants to make a calculation, borrows from his 
work. The instruments of the surveyor, as well as his calcula- 
tions ; the scale, as well as the computations of the house carpen- 
ter ; the interest tables, annuity tables and life tables, of the 
insurer, the banker, the merchant, are made by aid of formulae, 
which, though now simple as a, b, c, yet were in times past, the 
result of long and patient study of the mathematician. Hence 
every railroad that is constructed, every farm and town lot that 
is surveyed, every house that is built, every insurance that is 
effected, is so much the cheaper, and the business of the merchant 
is made so much the speedier, by the labors of the scholar. So, 
the geologist bored the earth and studied its formation from a 
pure thirst for knowledge. But the knowledge so gained, is 
largely used by the practical man when he would know where to 
dig for the treasures of the earth. Hence coal and salt, and all 
the metals, are the more abundant and cheaper by reason of his 
learning. The chemist studies the combinations of matter, he 
investigates them from the pure thirst for knowledge and truth. 
Yet practical men have borrowed so copiously from his discoveries 
that every art is modified by them ; our food, furniture, clothing ; 


8 


The Scholar. 


our farms, factories, almost every thing we have, has been cheap- 
ened in consequence. The investigation of the polarization of 
light seemed of all things the most remote from practical use, the 
most whimsical and trivial of learning. Yet it has been used in 
making a glass very serviceable in detecting shoals and sunken 
rocks ; and in the mechanic arts it is used in analyses too subtle 
for chemical agents. 

The same is true of other scholars, as well as the scientific. 
Nations are now drawn into such constant communion, that no 
government can carry on its affairs without a host of linguists 
for interpreters. The administration of the law affects so many 
and comprehensive interests, lawyers and courts examine so widely 
for every thing which can*shed light on the questions submitted 
to them, that the labors of the scholar in languages both ancient 
and modern are required in the interpretation and ascertainment 
of the law. Commerce, embracing all nations in its network, 
requires the aid of the linguist. The staunchest practical man 
agrees that the school system is of use, as at all events a cheap 
branch of the police ; and yet the true scholar is required to fit 
the teacher for the school. The practical man admits the church 
to be of use, at least as a great conservative institution, which, 
by keeping people quiet, helps to give security to property ; and 
the church calls loudly for all the stores of the most recondite 
learning to repel the assaults made upon it. 

Thus, although the scholar sits aloof from the thoroughfares of 
business, though he does not plough or build, or manufacture or 
barter, though he studies with a single view to enlarge the do- 
main of knowledge, yet all the while he incidentally fills the 
world with benefits of the most tangible and practical sort. 


An Address. 


9 


Though Niagara was not built for a mill-race, yet while chanting 
its eternal hymn of praise, it affords power for any number of 
mills if the practical man will use it. 

The scholar therefore stands the test proposed by the practical 
man. He is useful as the practical man understands utility. 
He does minister, and largely, to our physical wants. But we 
need not abide by so narrow a standard. He shall be examined 
in a higher sphere of utility. For hitherto we have been en- 
grossed, like the practical man, with the wants of the body, and 
have put the mind out of view. Yet we are less assured of the 
reality of the body than we are of the reality of the mind. 
For we know the body only through the mind, and while many 
deny the existence of the body, no one can deny the existence 
of the mind ; the very act of doubting proves its existence, 
since there must be a mind which doubts. Moreover, while the 
body, with its wants, keeps our company only a few years, the 
mind, with its desires, lives forever. And the wants of the mind 
are as imperative and as important as those of the body. It 
has appetites which must be satisfied ; it craves knowledge as 
importunately as the body craves food. It needs the amenities 
of literature wherewith to cloth itself and hide its nakedness. 
It needs some fixed opinion and belief wherein it can dwell, 
sheltered from the storms of anxious doubt ; it needs tools where- 
with to work ; and short processes to expedite its labor. 

While the practical man is taking care of the body, the scholar 
is busy supplying all these wants. One is ploughing the fields of 
science for a wholesome crop of plain facts. Another is busy 
with curious research, some luxury of learning, for the intellect- 
ual epicure. While writers of fiction are cooking up dainties for 
2 


10 


The Scholar. 


the delicate appetite, historians and biographers are weaving 
good, substantial fabrics to clothe the intellect ; while poets and 
philosophers are spinning most graceful and delicate tissues, 
resplendent with rainbow hues, for its adornment, and choice 
spirits are diving into the depths of thought to bring up priceless 
pearls. Some produce those charming works on which the wea- 
ried mind delights to repose, books that are equally welcome by * 
day or night, at home or abroad, without which a household is in- 
complete, and which indeed, make up our intellectual upholstery. 
Others with patient toil dig out and build up translations of for- 
eign works, which, like bridges and turnpikes, give convenient 
access to foreign realms of learning. Others are constructing 
scientific theories to serve as canals along which investigation 
more easily flows. Others are building encyclopedias and 
digests, over which the hurried student flashes through the 
realms of learning, as on a railroad. Others are manufacturing 
grammars, dictionaries, mathematical tables and formulae, tools 
for the intellect to work with. Some are vigorously tearing 
down old superstitions, and cleaning out dark, noisome corners 
of ignorance, the incommodious habitations of early times ; while 
such master-minds as Plato, Calvin, Bacon, are building monu- 
mental creeds, so vast and so massive, that generations of 
nations sit in quiet repose within them. The whole race of 
scholars is thus hard at work in intellectual fields and factories 
and workshops, ministering to every intellectual desire. 

The scholar is equally useful to society in the aggregate. 
Knowledge is a necessity to society. Society cannot live with- 
out it. Ignorance and barbarism, as well as knowledge and 
civilization, are eternally linked together. Every increase of the 


An Address. 


11 


common fund of learning, is a new impetus to the advance of 
civilization. The scholar, with his incessant heaping up of 
knowledge, is pressing on the march. He is continually rais- 
ing the platform on which humanity rests, and giving a broader 
horizon to view. However trival may seem the particular labor 
of any one scholar, it fits in some corner, it fills up some chink, 
it is a base for something else to stand upon. One may appear, 
alone, as insignificant as a coral insect ; but in the whole brother- 
hood of scholars, as in the host of insects in a coral reef, each 
one is doing his own part, and the united labor of all is raising 
their structure day by day, steadily and inevitably making it the 
impregnable foundation for a higher life. 

The scholar moreover has a useful function in neutralizing 
the bad qualities of the practical man. The aim of the practical 
man is, success. His life is a battle. His object is, victory. 
He toils, not so much for his absolute well being, as for his rela- 
tive superiority over other men. Other men are his competitors ; 
he can not help regarding them as rivals. The gentle sympa- 
thies which bind man to his fellows, the kindly interest in the 
human race which is inborn in every one ; the innate feeling 
which led the old pagan Roman to say 

Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto, 

is continually repressed, and supplanted by sentiments of antag- 
onism and suspicion. 

While his life develops largely the faculties used in it, shrewd- 
ness, quickness, energy, persistence and practical sense ; his 
other qualities rust from disuse. Science and literature sur- 
round him, but he gives them no thought. His mind gradually 


12 


The Scholar. 


narrows down to the field in which it is employed. Here he 
deals with merchandise, machinery, tools, mute, unquestioning 
servants to do his bidding. Here he finds clerks, laborers and 
other subordinates who obey him. He lives in a narrow compass 
when he is ruler. In the end, he gets to believe that his own 
little sphere is the whole world ; he undervalues and forgets 
whatever is without it ; whatever happens to be of no use there 5 
he stamps as absolutely useless. Thoughts which have no place 
there, he regards as nonsense. He is too apt to consider his 
little stock of information as the sum total of knowledge ; the 
results of his experience as the whole of wisdom ; and what has 
happened to please him, as the ultimata of excellence. 

His continual, keen strife ; his eager watchfulness to get the 
greatest amount of his neighbor’s property in exchange for the 
smallest amount of his own ; his continual rising upon the losses 
of others, tends with the best, to make him selfish. 

After all, his ambition is far from being the highest ; in fact, 
it is a low ambition. It is ambition to accumulate property, to 
grow rich. He toils for wealth himself, and reveres it in others. 
In a community of practical men, wealth is an idol. In a soci- 
ety wholly made up of them, Shakspeare, while writing those 
pages from which successive generations draw their choicest 
pleasure ; Newton evolving those laws upon which modern phys- 
ical science leans ; Locke, writing that essay which is the corner- 
stone ancl starting point of modern psychology, would starve 
unrespected and unnoticed. 

In fine, the whole life of the practical man tends to eliminate 
and discard every thing spiritual from his nature. He contends 
with physical obstacles : uses physical means ; toils for material 


An Address. 


13 


wealth. His life and aspirations all draw him towards materi- 
alism; and materialism is atheism. 

In all these particulars, the scholar is the opposite. His aim 
is different, his life is different, his implements are different. His 
studies acquaint with the history of the long growth of 
learning, and carry him through the universe of nature. 
He is at every step made to feel his deficiencies. He finds that 
every body, even the most ignorant, knows at least something 
which he does not, and that the whole sum of human knowledge 
is itself a small thing compared with omniscience. 

If we divide the objects of knowledge into two, the spiritual 
universe, and the material universe, the scholar tells us that our 
knowledge of the first is a shadow. Of the one infinite Spirit, 
nothing is known but what He has chosen to reveal. When we 
attempt of ourselves to grasp his attributes, we are foiled by the 
impossibility of finite beings compassing the infinite. Of the other 
countless spirits whom we believe to inhabit the universe, unseen 
by human vision, the scholar tells us there are guesses, but no 
knowledge. There is but one spiritual being of which we have 
knowledge, the human soul. Of this one being, indeed, the 
scholar declares he has knowledge. He drops his plummet to 
the very depths of consciousness. He presents a chart of its 
faculties, motives, will, and modes of acting. But, unhappily, 
different scholars report different soundings and often discrepant 
charts. 

For definite knowledge, then, we must turn to the material uni- 
verse, and ask the scholars of each science in turn, the general 
result of their labors. 

The astronomer, peering through his telescope, looks beyond 


14 


The Scholar. 


our system of worlds with their attendant moons, passes one after 
another the nebulae, island universes in the ocean of space, until 
the telescope reaches the limit of its power, and can penetrate no 
farther. This limit, beyond which all is sealed to human vision, 
is the outer boundary of human knowledge. The infinity beyond, 
is inscrutable ; the finity within, encloses all that man can know. 
In so much of this included immensity as lies beyond our solar 
system, the scholar points to some stars and some nebulae to which 
he has given names ; gives an exceedingly rude guess at the dis- 
tances of a few, a still ruder guess at the motions of others, and 
that is absolutely all he knows. For knowledge, he brings us 
down to our own familiar little bunch of planets. Here he can 
tell the sizes, and the weight, and the distances, and the motions 
of these round balls, but nothing more. What these round balls 
are made of, what manner of beings inhabit them, what has been 
their history, indeed, whether or not they are inhabited, he can 
not tell. They are nothing more than so many round balls 
swinging in a certain manner around the largest. For full 
knowledge, he brings us down to our own little earth. Even 
here the scholar tells us much of the surface is unexplored, and 
every year he is telling of new mountains, rivers, islands, seas, 
rocks and shoals discovered. As for what is beneath, the surface 
has been scratched so slightly, that he does not know whether the 
globe is solid or hollow ; whether the centre is cold rock, or a 
molten mass. The scholars of the natural sciences tell us they 
are only beginning. Every walk they take brings them upon 
new species of animals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, plants, or 
whatever each one is studying. The mineralogist is each day 
finding new substances ; the chemist new combinations ; the 


An Address. 


15 


geologist new fossils, and sometimes, as in the late discoveries in 
Wisconsin, a complete era in creation. 

The microscope unfolds new realms. Each handful of ocean 
sand is seen to teem with new families of shells ; each drop of 
water, with new tribes of animal life. The internal texture of 
all animal and vegetable substances is seen to be as complete, 
and jet as diversified, as animals and plants. For every branch 
of physical science which has been explored by the eye, the 
microscope reveals a correllative, the beginning of which, only, 
is known. The farther we penetrate into matter, the greater are 
the discoveries which are unfolded. But, the power of the 
microscope has a limit, and all that is beyond, remains unrevealed. 
Here we are brought to another impassable barrier. In one 
direction, the telescope reveals a boundary beyond which man 
can not penetrate ; in the opposite direction, the microscope dis- 
closes another. The whole possible of human learning is cooped 
up between these two limits. Yet of what lies between these 
two limits, the scholar tells us he has yet discovered only some 
rude, initiative fragments. What is known, is only a hint to what 
lies undiscovered. He has only deciphered the sign post which 
points towards the road to knowledge. 

Meagre and scanty as is the aggregate of learning about the 
works of creation, the scholar fairly tells us that the information 
concerning the works of man, is hardly more full. The histories 
and ephemeral records of the present day, confessedly narrate 
only an infinitesimal portion of what really happens. The history 
of former times is still more meagre. The most elaborate histo- 
ries tell the exploits of only a few men. Millions die unremem- 
bered for one whose acts are registered. Moreover, what is 


16 


The Scholar. 


called the historical period, is but a short fragment in the life of 
the world. And the histories of this period are challenged, dis- 
puted, and called by others than Walpole, a tissue of fiction. 
As for the other, the greater part of the life time of the world, 
the scholar, pointing here and there to a fragmentary urn, a bat- 
tered coin, a mouldering, tree covered mound, the sole remnant 
of nations which have passed away, confesses his despairing 
ignorance. The world then appears a grave-yard of nations, 
where every epitaph is defaced, and every monument crumbled. 
By these confessions, gathered from the various departments of 
scholars, we see that the sum total of human knowledge is a mere 
point. Each scholar from his own lookout gazes upon an untrod- 
den infinity stretching before him. Humanity has but reached 
the shore of the ocean of knowledge and been spattered with its 
spray. 

Yet, minute as this sum total is, compared with what is 
unknown, no man has mastered more than an exceedingly small 
proportion of it. The scholar, leading us through the great 
libraries of the world, and pointing to the gathered learning of 
ages, shows a mass of which the lifetime of Methusaleh would 
be spent in reading the title pages. Leading us among living 
students, he shows each group so engrossed in its own specialty 
as to be ignorant often of the existence of others. He shows 
that one who would have more than a superficial smattering 
must confine himself to a small department. We see one man 
who is called great, yet who knows little beyond some classes of 
fossils; another is famous, who is almost ignorant beyond the 
limits of a certain branch of chemistry. The historian is eminent 
almost in proportion as he contracts the field of his study. Small 


An Address. 


17 


indeed as is the hill of human science, yet the difference between 
the learning of any two men, is as the difference between two 
grains of sand at the base. He feels his ignorance and admits 
it. He makes us feel our ignorance. He humbles our pride, 
and makes the vanity of learning preposterous. 

His labors moreover tend to cherish the feeling of sympathy 
for the human race, which is repressed by the tendencies of the 
practical man. He is every day bringing to light new facts 
which make us feel more vividly our identity with man in all 
time. He points out that in ages long past, men had not only 
the same passions, the same wants, the same tastes, the same 
caprices ; but also the same institutions, the same customs, the 
same trades, luxuries and household comforts with ourselves. 
Nay, even our most peculiar American customs have been antic- 
ipated. He shows us in the constitution offered by the emperor 
Honorius to the seven provinces of Gaul, a tolerable hint of our 
federal constitution ; in a decision of a monkish court in Rheims 
in the tenth century he shows a precedent for the law of Ameri- 
can slavery even as laid down by Judge Sharkey; in many 
French land-holders in the ninth century, he points to a perfect 
type of the American land speculator and layer out of towns in 
the wilderness; in the oracle of Dodona, he shows an anticipation 
of our spirit rappers ; and in the plays of Aristophanes, he reads 
the best satire yet written, of the American stump orator, of 
the strong minded woman and of Bloomerism. He brings home 
our affinity with all mankind. While the practical man finds 
himself in a world of opponents, and sees little connection between 
himself and the past, the scholar sees around him a race of broth- 
3 


18 


The Scholar. 


ers, and looking through the vista of ages, seems to see a gallery 
of family portraits. 

The scholar’s life itself, is as good a lesson as any that he 
teaches. His labor is, in its very nature, disinterested. He toils, 
not for wealth, hut for knowledge ; not for aggrandizement, but 
for truth. He traverses the sands of Sahara, and the ice of the 
Arctic circle, he exiles himself from society and abandons the 
pursuit of wealth, to devote every thing to his calling. He asks 
for no exclusive property in his acquisitions ; he labors for the 
common good. Whatever he discovers, he gives at once to the 
world. He strives to get knowledge, knowing that he can not be 
sole owner of it. He toils for it, knowing that when gained it 
will be, and intending that it shall be, the common property of all 
who would share it. His life is a standing rebuke to every thing 
sordid. 

So the scholars all over the world are helping each other. A 
discovery made, a new step taken, by one, is a gain, an advance, 
to all. They offer a model of mutual dependence, and mutual trust. 

In the labor of the scholar, it is the mind that chiefly toils. 
Toiling minds come in contact with each other. Intellect keeps 
company with intellect. Moreover, the student of psychology 
and ethics simply investigates mind. Scholars of science are 
busied in tracing out the works of the divine mind. 

Still farther, many scholars tell us that in the last result of 
science, they can find in the material world no operative force, 
except the human will, and the ever acting will of God ; that 
what we call the laws of nature — the law of gravitation — of 
electricity, magnetism, are only the modes in which he chooses 
day by day to move the particles of matter. Ilis omnipresence 
then, becomes startlingly real. We feel ushered face to face 


An Address. 


19 


into his awful presence, and know his being by seeing it. Every 
step brings home the reality of spiritual existence. The whole 
tendency of the scholar is, to check the drifting of the age 
towards materialism. 

The scholar, then, can look the practical man in the face, 
and assert his usefulness. He is useful in a higher sense than 
his catechiser thought of. He ministers to our physical wants ; 
he gratifies the cravings of the mind, which are as exacting, and 
quite as important ; and he cultivates the finer part of our nature, 
which is neglected and injured, in exclusive devotion to prac- 
tical business. 

This high calling imposes great duties. The scholar is not 
a taster of intellectual dainties, a gourmand of intellectual food. 
To be true to himself, his life must be a life of toil. His law is 
progress. He must ever be adding something to the existing 
fund of knowledge. Then as his labor is one of ceaseless activity, 
so his proper condition is one of absolute freedom. No subject 
is so trival that he may not notice ; none so high that he shall not 
question it. He cannot be confined in any direction without 
risk of deranging his development elsewhere. Every repres- 
sion of learning puts the growth of learning away. No one 
moreover is competent to put his finger and say 6 4 this matter 
shall not be inquired into, we know enough of this.” For what 
man or set of men, shall define the ultimate of mankind. Cen- 
sorship is more impudent than it is wicked. The American 
scholar, indeed, has no fear of ecelesiastical thunder, no dread 
of the iron chains of official censorship, or the gilded fetters of in- 
dividual patronage, yet even he is not free from the rule of public 
opinion, an arbiter quite as peremptory, and at times, quite as 


20 


The Scholar. 


harsh, nor from the incubus of theories hoary with age. Men 
who want to keep their opinions, and are too indolent, or too 
weak to defend them, are impatient of investigation and ready 
to crush it. The true man of science, however, will discard 
any theory, by whatever names it is sanctioned, as soon as it is 
found to be inconsistent with facts, and every true scholar is 
regardless of public opinion ; his aim is independent of applause 
or censure. A disinterested and absolutely unrestrained use of 
the faculties which Providence has entrusted to him, may, in 
time, arrive at true knowledge; but when his inquiries are 
cramped and confined, he can not possibly attain to the whole 
truth. Indeed, in the field where investigation has been most 
jealously watched, the advantage of the scholar’s complete 
freedom has been most perfectly shown. The inquiries of the 
German critics of the school of Eichhorn and Strauss, were 
profoundly deprecated ; many would have suppressed them alto- 
gether. Yet now that the smoke of battle is cleared away, two 
results are made clearer than they were before. Eirst, that if 
the Gospels are genuine, the miracles are historical facts: — 
second, that the Gospels are genuine. Geology was at one time 
a tabooed thing. Now geology shows that in former ages the 
whole animal life on the world was destroyed, buried, fossilized, 
and that races entirely new, were not born or developed, but 
created in their place. What is this but a miracle on a grand 
scale ? Geology shows that this miracle has been often repeated, 
and hence brings proof of the actual fact of miracles, wholly 
aside from the Scripture testimony of particular miracles. On 
the very topic, therefore, wherein, by reason of its great impor- 
tance, we are most jealous of investigation, the freest inquiry 


An Address. 


21 


results in the completest satisfaction. The scholar, therefore, 
engaged in any inquiry, will absolutely shut his eyes and close 
his ears upon aught that would put limit to his research. 

It is equally his duty to he sincere. He is not to strive to 
establish a* theory, to gain a victory, to win fame. And when 
for such a purpose, he distorts a fact, or suppresses it, or makes 
an uncandid use of it, he belies his calling, and so far, ceases to 
be a true scholar. 

Both the Practical man and the Scholar, therefore, have their 
work to do ; both are needed in the world. The one is needed 
to support the present life ; the other to develop our intellectual 
being. A nation of one would be a sordid race ; a people of 
the other would soon starve. But a type Practical man, or a 
type Scholar, such as I have described, has hardly ever been 
seen. Each one is an element of character, rather than a 
character. They are intellectual temperaments, like the bodily 
temperaments ; they are found blended in different proportions, 
in all persons, and, in due combinations, they help each other. 
The scholastic and elegant Di Medici, were most successful 
merchants, and Mr. Grote is said to have written the best histo- 
ry of Greece, partly by reason of his experience in business 
life. 

The complete character, requires both. With us there is little 
fear that the practical temperament will lie dormant. The ne- 
cessities of the time, the temperament of the people, the ambition 
for fine houses, rich furniture, and expensive living, the preva- 
lent standard of success, the reverence paid to wealth, give a 
feverish activity to it. The scholastic temperament is in much 
greater danger of dying out. The graduated student soon finds 


22 


The” Scholar. 


those studies which were once his delight, are abandoned ; one by 
one, he sees them drifting away at first with despairing regret, then 
with callous indifference, as he hardens into the mere money making 
man. All should welcome the monitor which awakens the Scholar 
slumbering within us. All welcome then to day. The student 
exults in it as an ovation to learning ; the toil worn man of the 
world, revisiting his alma mater, is reinvigorated by it like Antseus 
touching the earth. 

Gentlemen of the Philomcithesian Society of the Graduating 

Class : 

I am deputed to present to you these diplomas. Their value 
depends upon yourselves. Every day, we hear diplomas sneered 
at as mere “bits of parchment.” And, indeed, their money 
value is not great. But a piece of ribbon is considered a gift 
worthy of an emperor ; a few ivy leaves were considered the 
noblest present from the united States of Greece. Their value 
is representative. The soldier prizes the ribbon, because it is a 
badge of glory ; the old Greek valued the ivy leaves, for they 
represented world renowned triumphs. These diplomas are 
clustered over with memories of your college life. To day your 
college competitions and rivalries are all over ; your scholastic 
life under these pleasant shades is drawn to a close ; your college 
friendships, more intimate and dearer than any which you will 
form hereafter, are about to be severed. 

Has olim meminisse juyabit. 

As you prize these memories, so will you value these bits of 
parchment. And however practical you may become, they will, 

I hope, help to keep the scholar alive within you. 















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